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APFS and Fusion Drives
- Thread starter ryxn
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It definitely implies that it will be supported in a later release of 10.13. I’d recommend holding off installing APFS on a fusion drive for now. It might be ok but the fact they’ve withheld it from the GM suggests they’ve found issues with it, those issues may not be immediately apparent either.
It appears to be a wise advice indeed. I read somewhere it's possible to update a (fusion) drive to APFS without having to clean install, is that correct?
Btw is automatic conversion to APFS for FD available in GM candidate or only manual?
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A quick question, has anyone tried manually converting HFS+ fusion drive to APFS? How was the experience? Do you need to reformat the drive and migrate again, or simply choose convert when you're installing High Sierra via bootable USB?
Because if we are talking about reformatting and migrating, I think I'd put off upgrading to High Sierra until Fusion Drive is officially supported.
Because if we are talking about reformatting and migrating, I think I'd put off upgrading to High Sierra until Fusion Drive is officially supported.
Am I reading this warning as if it was converted to APFS OR I converted by forcing it to APFS, that version of APFS is not supported and is the issue? That is on previous versions to this release.
If, as I am, the old format is there then it will just install it with no issues?
If, as I am, the old format is there then it will just install it with no issues?
In the latest GM candidate, no, you would have to erase the drive first.
Automatic conversion to APFS in the GM candidate is limited ONLY to full SSD systems. No spinning drives or Fusion Drives are automatically converted to APFS.
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Yes that is correct. Fusion drives that are APFS formatted will have to be erased, formatted as HFS+ and then High Sierra can be installed and data recovered from a backup.
Fusion Drives that are currently formatted as HFS+ can have the GM candidate installed as is, no erase required.
I do not really get it. I have a 1TB fusion drive that are formatted with HFS+ and running Sierra. How do I upgrade to High Sierra and have the disk to be converted into APFS using disk utility in recovery mode?
I have tried to upgrade to High Sierra beta 10 for a week ago. I entered recovery mode and run the disk utility. But the option "Convert to APFS" was greyed out. Is it possible to do that in GM candidate version? Please help!
With the GM Candidate, what happens if you separate the Fusion drive into SSD and HD? With the installer automatically use APFS on the SSD for the OS install?
As it stands, fusion drives will NOT be auto converted to APFS when you install High Sierra. APFS is, for the moment unsupported on those drive types. Apples notes suggest that it will be made available at a later date but when exactly that is is currently unknown.
It is not possible to convert a fusion drive to APFS in recovery mode, it would have to be erased first. I strongly advise against doing this, if Apple have decided not to ship High Sierra with APFS support for fusion drives there must be a good reason. We don't know what that reason is and not all file system issues are immediately noticeable, so you'd be taking a possibly high risk for for very little benefit. I would install High Sierra with HFS+ and wait until either enough information is available to quantify the risk or until Apple officially support APFS on fusion drives. It'll likely be in the first couple of point releases so it probably won't be long.
I upgraded Sierra to High Sierra a week ago. I experienced that High Sierra was not as fast as Sierra and thought this was due to the Fusion disk was not converted to APFS. Maybe there are more animation effects in High Sierra that make the operating system feel slower compare to Sierra?
I'm will stay with Sierra until Apple has solved the problem with APFS and Fusion drives.
HS uses Metal 2, so if you have a Metal-capable Mac (2012 or later) it should feel faster.
Metal capable doesn't mean it's activated. There are lots of GPU support Meta, however, Apple only allow the Intel iGPU use it for OS animation.
Not sure if it's still the same in HS Metal 2.
Doesn’t look like it’s limited to Intel:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/is-windowserver-smoother-now-on-metal.2050279/
i did it manually in the recovery menu after installing high sierra.
it wasn't converted automatically, as stated.
no issues whatsoever. you don't need to reformat or migrate again.
So, what are the options? I moved to APFS with my Fusion drive a while back in the betas. Do I run this last beta until they support it or do I need to start over? If I could find a way to move everything to just my SSD that would be fine too. I would use the spinning drive for general storage, no big deal. What are my options here?
just upgrade to the release version when it comes out.
i see no reason why apple would revert your file system.
remember: they only said fusion drives wouldn't automatically be converted to AFPS.
besides that, you can still "defusion" your drive if that makes you feel more comfortable.
While I like Fusion Drives, last year I had an issue with El Capitan beta and, by accident, my Fusion Drive got split into the SSD and HDD parts. I don't really remember what I did or what happened, but I never bothered setting it back to Fusion.
Anyway, the SSD portion converted to APFS without even asking, and the HDD is HFS+
I don't expect any issues, so if anyone has a Fusion Drive and really wants APFS, they can split the drive. Not sure if it's a good reason to do it, really, but as I said - I already had them split by accident, so might as well roll with it.
Anyway, the SSD portion converted to APFS without even asking, and the HDD is HFS+
I don't expect any issues, so if anyone has a Fusion Drive and really wants APFS, they can split the drive. Not sure if it's a good reason to do it, really, but as I said - I already had them split by accident, so might as well roll with it.
What I am trying to do is install the latest version. It gives me the error that APFS is not supported in the initial release of High Sierra. It provides a link with instructions to reformat my drives and restore everything. Maybe that is my only choice to move forward but I wonder if I just wait a while if they will support APFS Fusion then I can just update.
I had reformatted my Fusion drive to APFS in an earlier beta (no issues). When updating to the release candidate (17A362a) I got the same error message about APFS not being supported. I followed the process in the support link to reformat the Fusion drive back to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and then installed the latest beta. I used Time Machine to restore everything - first time for a TM restore and it worked quite well. (There are options with CCC, etc.)
While this was a little of a PITA, it will allow the installation of future point upgrades until Apple approves APFS for Fusion drives. (Hopefully, this conversion will be painless!)
Well, I followed the directions. Pretty simple to follow but it failed to boot again. I tried a few things then went with option 2. Nuke it all, split the drives, reload from Time Machine. Back in service with two standalone drives which is what I wanted in the end so no biggie. I could have continued with Fusion but don't really need to since over time I have moved much more to the cloud.
I did a new test and installed High Sierra GM Candidate on my iMac 27 ", late 2015, 16 GB memory, 2 GB display, 1 TB Fusion Drive.
I noticed after the installation that the high Sierra was a bit slower than Sierra. There were longer time delays before icons and windows appeared on the screen.
I took the boot time between HS and S. From I press the power button until the login screen appeared, it took 18.7 seconds on S while it tooked 45 seconds for HS.
Maybe I will install HS in the future but definitely not now.
I noticed after the installation that the high Sierra was a bit slower than Sierra. There were longer time delays before icons and windows appeared on the screen.
I took the boot time between HS and S. From I press the power button until the login screen appeared, it took 18.7 seconds on S while it tooked 45 seconds for HS.
Maybe I will install HS in the future but definitely not now.